One-year-old Tanzanian boy successfully treated for rare heart

Udaipur. Doctors at Indraprashtha Apollo Hospitals successfully performed a highly complicated and critical surgery to save the life of a one-year-old Tanzanian baby boy, Fravianous. The boy was suffering from a rare congenital heart disease called Hemitruncus. He has been successfully operated upon by a team of doctors from Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals including Dr Muthu Jothi, Senior Consultant- Pediatric Cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr AK Ganjoo- Senior Consultant, Cardiology, Dr Deepa Sarkar- Consultant, Pediatric Cardiac Anesthetist and their team.
Explaining the case Dr. Muthu Jothi said, “When we first saw the patient we knew that this will be a high-risk surgery but we decided to go ahead and operate as the child would not survive without the surgery. A normal heart has four chambers and four valves, where one blood vessel carries blood to the body and the other one to the lungs. In this case, the patient had no right lung and no blood vessel going to the right lung. He had only left lung and the left pulmonary artery arising from the aorta. It’s called Hemitruncus (Half truncus). The patient also had a big hole in the heart. Normally the oxygen saturation levels are around 95 – 100 but as the child had recurring chest infections came in with a saturation of 35.” “Doctors are considered no less than god and belief in this statement increases when they save the life of your loved ones. My son too got a second life when Dr. Muthu Jothi from Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals saved my little baby boy from a serious disease which other doctors refused to operate,” says Dativa, mother of the patient. Giving further details, Dr Jothi said, “In order to treat the disorder, we first closed the hole in patient’s heart. We detached the left lung blood vessel coming from the aorta and then between the left lung blood vessel and right side of the heart we engrafted a tube. The tube was made up of cow’s veins known as ‘Contegra’. The veins also have valves which we used between the right heart and the lungs. Now, the contegra is supplying blood to the left lung. As the patient had only one lung, he took a long time to recover. He was off the ventilator but we again had to put him on ventilator for about 10 – 12 days because of breathing issues. Later, we kept him on mild oxygen with pressure. He is doing well now and is good to go back to his country.” “The patient needs to be on medication for some time and needs proper care as he just has one lung to perform all the functions,” Dr Jothi added. “My child used to be very sick. He used to cough a lot and had terrible sweating when he was just two weeks old. We consulted the doctors in Tanzania first, but he got no relief. With time, his nails and tongue also started turning blue. We understood this is something very serious and we decided to come to India for his treatment. All thanks to the doctors here at Apollo Hospital who agreed to perform his surgery as most of the doctors denied to do his surgery considering the risk involved. Dr. Muthu Jothi took up the challenge and treated our child successfully,” said mother of the patient.

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